Baaaaaaaaa! The outcome of almost a week away from social networking sites

It’s been a funny old week where I’ve been making contact with my focused, hard working self and avoiding my sheep-like, fuzzy headed social networking self. I needed to get some serious work done in order to progress to the next level in the game of jacquiworld and to do this I had to cut myself off.

The self-imposed isolation from facebook and twitter lasted four days, which was long enough to get me up-to-date with all my work tasks. Now, on Friday afternoon I have a huge sense of achievement which seems familiar from my distant pre-broadband past. Friday afternoon spent playing dial-up computer pinball with Mr Jones playing in the background.

Even so, I couldn’t keep away. I had time to reflect on what I like about facebook and I now know that it is the blog and articles that I can source on there. I also like the connection with people who used to be part of my world but, even thought we never see each other any more, we still comment on each other’s status.

Twitter is a different matter. I don’t know how people who use Twitter all the time find time to work and think deeply, it’s a constant distraction! I only found two really interesting pieces of information on twitter in the last month.

Of course, you may think I am missing the point: social networking is SOCIAL networking not work networking, and I can’t expect people’s extracurricular time to be spent informing me, can I?

So now I’m going to have a sense of balance about my time online. In my working day (times of which are 7 am to 7 pm) I will read academic articles and journals online, as well as standards and other relevant info, as well as contibuting to knoweldge. Between 7 pm and 7 am I’ll be frivolous on social networking. Am I envious of those people who can be on facebook and twitter all day? No, because this week has shown me the breadth and the depth of what a good job well done can be, and still have my friends there at the end of it all.